


там хорошо, где нас нет

by novoaa1



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood and Injury, Drinking, F/F, Post-Endgame, Post-Lagos, Russian Proverbs, Strike Team Delta, Team Dynamics, Team Fluff, carol danvers being a Mess, i should tag later i really cant think of anything, natasha being soft for wanda sort of, the team being lowkey a mess, time jumps, uhhh, which we love to see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24500809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: “What happened to you?” Wanda questions, conflict evident in her hushed tone as they make their way side-by-side down to the Medbay wearing matching S.H.I.E.L.D.-emblazoned merchandise.“Aliens,” Natasha quips concisely, then makes a concerted effort to withhold a wince as a particularly sharp right turn round the next corner has the open gash upon her left side smarting painfully beneath the cotton fabric of the S.H.I.E.L.D. tee. "What’s your excuse?”Or: After Lagos, Wanda has... a bit of a tough time.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Maria Hill & Natasha Romanov, Wanda Maximoff & Natasha Romanov, Wanda Maximoff/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 12
Kudos: 121





	там хорошо, где нас нет

**Author's Note:**

> back to basics, hm? i realized i hadn't written a one-shot of wandanat in a while... 
> 
> там хорошо, где нас нет | _tom harasho, guhdye nas nyet_ | "there is good where we are not" (literal translation) [american rough equivalent: "the grass is greener on the other side"]

After Lagos, Wanda is very near inconsolable—holing up in her quarters at the Compound, barely sleeping most nights and bolting awake in the middle of the nights that she does sobbing for her brother’s bloodless ghost to give her strength, to provide some intangible fragment of absolution, to forgive her for the innocent lives she plundered on foreign soil. (A decidedly reluctant F.R.I.D.A.Y. tells Natasha that last part after much coaxing and argumentation, as she knows damn well Wanda never would.)

Steve says she just needs space, and Sam’s sentiment is much the same, but Natasha happens past an utterly distraught Wanda beating her bare blood-stained knuckles into a wall of solid brick and audibly choking on her own desperate sobs within the cavernous training-slash-gym space of the Compound on a Saturday afternoon while the rest of the team are out on a reconnaissance op in Toronto, and she can’t help thinking to herself that maybe space is overrated. 

“Wanda,” she calls gently as she makes her approach, consciously putting more weight into every footfall—everything and anything she can do to telegraph her approach to the near-hysterical young woman such that she doesn’t feel blindsided by Natasha’s presence. (It also would have the added bonus of Natasha _not_ being hex-blasted well into next week, which would be the ideal aftereffect.)

The Sokovian girl in question doesn’t falter, doesn’t give any outward indication that she’s cognizant of Natasha’s steady approach—she just keeps punching (—her form is rather sloppy, but that’s a conversation for another day), swinging desperately at the cherry-red brick (now glistening wet with merlot-crimson blood) and letting out involuntary pained whimpers on every strike. 

“Wanda,” Natasha tries again, louder, and this time it seems to take:

Wanda freezes mid wind-up, the delicate lines of her back muscles visibly tensed beneath a sleeveless sky-blue tank, bare milky-pale legs trembling with the considerable effort she’s exerted thus far (which, judging by the way dark crimson blood on brick has dribbled nearly half-way down to the floor, is a lot). She turns, then, tear-stained cheeks flushed rosy-pink with physical strain and profoundly personal tragedy, flyaway strands of hair plastered to her temples with hard-earned sweat (the rest of it is pulled up into a somewhat hasty ponytail at the crown of her skull). 

“Natasha,” she chokes out eventually, struggling to meet her gaze. “I-I thought… I thought that I was alone.”

Natasha feels her lips twitch. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Wanda sniffles, worrying her lower lip guiltily between her teeth as her sweat-dotted chest heaves in an effort to regain her breathing. 

“I… I can explain,” she manages weakly after a long moment, wiping hastily at her tear-stained cheeks with the palms of her hands. 

(The motion stains the hollow of her jaw with a dirt-mingled streak of fresh blood, though Natasha doesn’t quite see the point in calling attention to it.)

“No need,” Natasha replies without a moment’s hesitation, allowing a rare note of genuine sincerity to creep into her gentle tone. “Let’s go.” With that, she turns sharply on her heel, weaving deftly through a mess of broken carbon-fibre arrows and 75-lb. dumbbells and throwing knives littering the floor (she could yell at Clint and Steve about that later) and making swiftly for the exit, feeling Wanda’s curious teary-eyed gaze upon her all the while. 

After a moment’s pause, Natasha hears the younger woman stumbling her way into pursuit.

“Where are we going?”

“Showers, then the Medbay,” Natasha calls back over her shoulder, slowing her pace to a crawl as she nears the doorless entrance. “It’s non-negotiable. I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

— — 

They hit up the communal showers on the same floor, a curiously pedestrian design complete with two dozen showerheads distributed across a large white-tiled wash area, clear bottles of expensive shampoo-conditioners and body gels made readily available on a row of titanium-alloyed shelves beside each spout, refined (read: ridiculously expensive) Japanese bidet toilets and gleaming sinks carved from Italian marble and Stark touch-screen tablets embedded everywhere in the walls (complete with a 24/7 link to F.R.I.D.A.Y. for real-time news updates and cases of dire emergency).

Natasha leads the way inside, pausing at a row of stainless-steel benches bordering the tiled shower space and stripping herself with military-esque efficiency even as she feels the wide-eyed stare of a somewhat reluctant (not to mention dazed) Wanda Maximoff upon her all the while. 

It’s rather simple for her, as she’s still wearing her standardized Stark-Industries-manufactured and S.H.I.E.L.D.-approved combat suit—it’s all one piece (sans the utility belt and thigh holsters, which she’d left up in her own quarters on the 22nd floor) and more than tight enough to justify not wearing a bra, with a thin zipper running straight down the middle to reach just beneath her navel and easily-retractable Widow Bites encircling either wrist. 

She deactivates her Bites, peels off the slim-fitting uniform, and swiftly divests herself of the lacey black thong underneath all in less than a minute, tossing the garments into a haphazard pile upon white-tiled flooring beneath the metal benches as more of an afterthought than anything else. 

She’s naked, now, even as Wanda remains fully clothed—though, after Natasha turns to give her a rather pointed look, Wanda’s pale cheeks are tinging with pink and the young witch is hastily making to undress herself as well. 

(Natasha can’t help but find it rather precious, the girl’s bashfulness, even if only for a moment.)

It’s not necessarily anything new to either of them (though especially not unto Natasha), nudity in the presence of each other and their various female teammates. There was one mission in particular after which Natasha can remember showering in the same area as nearly every other female Avenger or Avenger-adjacent associate—Carol, Wanda, Maria, Sharon, Bobbi. 

The mission itself had appeared fairly straightforward, _simple_ in a way ops with modern-day S.H.I.E.L.D. so seldom were—infiltrate and neutralize the last in a string of still-operational HYDRA bases across greater Eurasia (ideally with minimal casualties) near the Estonian capital city of Tallinn, arresting any active members of the radical movement and taking the HYDRA prisoners into protective custody.

Honestly, Natasha had mused to Coulson that the sheer number of people boarding the Quinjet at HQ (their magnitude of individual capability aside)—Carol, Wanda, Maria, Sharon, Bobbi, Clint—seemed _a bit_ overkill, especially when taking into consideration the relative ease with which the past handful of Eurasian HYDRA fortresses had fallen… But Phil had simply given her a shrug and that infuriatingly kind grin of his, telling her, “Well, better safe than sorry, right?”

Turns out, Phil was right—Natasha _hates_ it when he’s right. 

(He most always is.)

Five minutes into the op found them struggling to keep both a small (and surprisingly well-supplied) uprising of remaining HYDRA forces along with a somewhat minor-scale alien invasion originating from a glowing bright-blue portal that had materialized overhead amongst the clouds seemingly out of nowhere. 

Blue-skinned humanoid-looking aliens with eyes the color of molten gold and a healthily-proportioned musculature fell through to the ground from the skies even as gunfire rang across smoke-ridden farmland and destructive Tesseract-powered surges of luminescent blue pulsed intermittently at waist-height over an alarmingly wide-sweeping radius and every uniformed agent on the battlefield found themselves at their wit’s end in attempting to remain alive amidst it all.

At one point, a glistening oversized toad-like creature with lime-green skin and a curious penchant for burping-slash-breathing out _flames_ in multi-meter-long columns across the farmland dropped in from the phosphorescent-blue portal up above. The creature—whatever it was—didn’t live for very long; the moment Carol blasted the slimy thing, it exploded in a truly revolting amalgamation of amphibian-esque skin fragments (and internal organs), dark-cobalt-blue watery goo, and a decidedly more viscous (and more plentiful, unfortunately) sickening olive-green slime that blanketed _everything_ in gelatinous sage-green _gunk_. 

Absolutely no one was spared; predictably, the ride back to HQ was filled with a chorus of raucous complaints and half-hearted finger-pointing all around and the truly torturous scent of alien innards lingering pervasively overhead. 

As soon as they touched back down at the Compound, from the very moment the ramp allowed just barely enough space for the first goo-covered victim (Clint, in this case) to slip through, everyone was booking it out the Quinjet and making a sprint for the nearest showers—which just so happened to be the occasionally-utilized communal ones on the floor below (though no one was feeling particularly picky enough to complain, just eager to feel somewhat _clean_ again once and for all).

Strangely enough, it was rather… light-hearted and _fun_ : practically tripping over one another in a rush to claim the first shower (though for what reason, Natasha still doesn’t quite know, because there were more than enough showerheads to go around); stripping off their slime-soaked clothing at breakneck speed and flinging each sopping-wet article onto the floors as if it might burn them to wear for even a moment longer; bursting into a fit of unruly laughter when an overly keen (and very naked) green-sludge-bespangled Carol Danvers zipped across the tile in her haste to get beneath the shower spray, only to slip and fall spectacularly midway, leaving a rather quaint butt-shaped impact mark (with a spider-web of adjoining cracks) firmly imprinted in the tile. 

Needless to say, it was a memorable mission, and not for the typical reasons—an unreasonable number of near-death experiences, a cutting betrayal from someone close within the ranks, the untimely death of one (or more) allied combatants in the field… 

No, this mission was significant because it was _fun_ , gratifying in a way such precious few ever are (especially where Natasha is concerned). 

All that to make the point: it wasn’t— _isn’t_ —unusual for Natasha to shower with Wanda after an especially grueling bout of training, or to wash Maria’s hair when a mission injures her badly enough to require help, or to walk into her quarters only to find a fully nude Clint having a soak in her bathtub complete with bright-banana-yellow rubber duckies and eucalyptus spearmint bath salts like he owns the place (which, considering how often Natasha has done the exact same thing to him, perhaps he _a little bit_ does).

And where at first it seemed to elicit some (completely understandable) degree of discomfort within Wanda, it's now become nothing more than routine; a facet of daily life when residing in the Compound amidst a rag-tag assortment of preternaturally powerful freaks and geeks and immortal beings strong enough to make the Bible read like a children’s book in comparison. 

But still, there remains a sort of tension in the air just the same, a kind of strain Natasha can’t help but take note of even as Wanda swiftly strips herself bare and Natasha focuses a sum of her somewhat divided attentions upon wrenching the shower-head knob to somewhere between “hot” and “scalding.”

She knows, of course, what it is—she’d have to be simply inept to miss it, considering the intensive training she’s endured since childhood and the life comprised almost entirely of meticulous attention to detail she’s left behind. 

Yes, she _knows_ that Wanda—heaven help her poor, misguided soul—finds her attractive, and has for quite some time. 

She knows this, and she’ll admit that perhaps in another lifetime, she would welcome these attentions… reciprocate them, even. 

(Sometimes when it’s late at night and she’s bolting upright in bed from a nightmare she knows is at least half a painfully true memory, she’ll find herself weak enough to admit that maybe a bigger part of her than she’d like to admit already does. 

Reciprocate Wanda’s feelings, that is. 

At least, her sentiment of primordial lust, of _wanting_ , if nothing more. 

~~And yet, there’s some wholeheartedly incorrigible sliver of her being that knows damn well it’s something more.~~ )

The steaming water hits her bare shoulder (where her once-pale skin is now a sickening shade of bruising purple) and she doesn’t make a sound. 

She pretends not to hear the involuntary gasp Wanda lets out when the fully-bare girl finally turns her blue-green gaze upon Natasha, taking in devastation littering her nude figure—a parting gift from the super-powered assholes trying to tear her last mission to shreds, the very same ones she left dismembered and seeping violently-purple-hued blood over the sandy dunes of the Kalahari desert just hours earlier. (Hence her absence on the team’s reconnaissance op to the Six up north.)

“Natasha… "

Natasha doesn’t dare meet the younger girl’s gaze, just sidesteps her spray and begins fiddling with the next knob on the wall, turning on the second spray to a somewhat more reasonable setting than her own—somewhere between “warm” and “hot.”

“I told you we were getting stitched up after this, didn’t I?” she calls loftily over her shoulder as she steps back beneath her scalding-hot waterfall, sighing quietly to herself (half with pleasure, half with pain) with every surge of near-boiling clean water upon her battle-worn skin. “Now, get in—at this rate, I’ll bleed out long before we even get there.”

— — 

“What happened to you?” Wanda questions, conflict evident in her hushed tone as they make their way side-by-side down to the Medbay wearing matching S.H.I.E.L.D.-emblazoned merchandise (snatched from the hamper-full of black T-shirts and matching sweatpants with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo embroidered in grey thread available in every communal shower-slash-locker-room). 

“Aliens,” Natasha quips concisely, then makes a concerted effort to withhold a wince as a particularly sharp right turn round the next corner has the open gash upon her left side smarting painfully beneath the cotton fabric of the S.H.I.E.L.D. tee. "What’s your excuse?”

Wanda’s expression falls. “I… I cannot stop thinking about it.”

“Lagos,” Natasha clarifies, intentionally keeping her voice even. 

Wanda nods miserably. “I _killed_ people—"

“Correction: _Rumlow_ killed people.”

“I killed him, too.”

Natasha fights the urge to roll her eyes at that. (If it were Clint, she would have. For Wanda, she needs to be kinder, she knows; placid.) “Hardly. That vest was rigged to blow long before we intervened—he was more than willing to die for the cause.”

“Those people were not, though,” Wanda reasons, her tone ripe with guilt. “They were innocent. They did not sign up to die.”

Natasha lets out a noiseless sigh as a final left turn takes them to the doors of the Medbay, open and awaiting their arrival. 

She leads the way, striding as confidently as she can manage into the desolate interior, feeling Wanda falter in her wake.

“We have what we have when we have it,” she murmurs eventually, more to herself than to Wanda (though plenty loud enough for the latter to hear) before traipsing briskly over to a set of stainless-steel cabinets suspended overhead and rummaging through its cluttered interior until she finds what she’s looking for: a wide-set translucent (unopened) bottle of of Шустов (“Shustov”) vodka. Not her first choice, of course, but it’d have to do. 

“I don't know what you mean by that,” Wanda replies cautiously, her gaze burning into Natasha as she busies herself with forcefully divesting the glass bottle of its characteristically fat cork—

_Pop!_ There it goes, bouncing audibly across the polished granite flooring before rolling to a stop a good three feet to Natasha’s left. 

She doesn’t bother picking it back up. 

Instead, she brings the bottle opening up to her lips by the neck and takes a healthy swig, refusing to wince even as the clear liquor burns its way down her throat hotly enough to sting. 

“It means you can’t let yourself linger on what could have been,” she tells Wanda simply, traversing back over towards a comparatively clean-looking vacant bed near the entrance (its titanium-reinforced doors now shut securely behind them, courtesy of F.R.I.D.A.Y.). 

Wanda reluctantly follows, taking the near-full liquor bottle from Natasha when she offers it and knocking back a small gulp that makes her pretty blue-green eyes water. “What about those with no one to remember the life they lived?” she questions afterwards, voice rough with righteous indignation and the scorching remnants of 80-proof liquor on her tongue. "Who will mourn them?"

Natasha holds her gaze even as she rucks up the hem of her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue tee with one hand and reaches again for the vodka with the other. (Wanda hands it over without hesitation—Natasha’s taught her well, she thinks.) 

“You will,” she replies simply. “But there’s a difference between mourning and torturing yourself, and you passed the ‘mourning’ stage about three self-isolating days ago.”

Wanda has the decency to at least look somewhat rueful at that—a slight flush tinges her pale cheeks; she lowers her gaze, seeming to take a rather sudden interest in keenly observing the toes of her bare feet. (Natasha _refuses_ to find the show of bashfulness even mildly endearing.)

“I don’t know how to do that, Natasha,” she admits quietly after a moment. "I don’t… I don’t know if I _can_."

Natasha allows her lips to curl into something of a knowing grin even as she pours a generous helping of vodka over the gaping wound that runs diagonally just aloft her left hipbone, thereby successfully watering down the oozing flow of dark cherry-red blood and sending unforgiving jolts of sharp pain everywhere throughout her body—she grits her teeth against the dizzying waves of discomfort, silently willing herself to stay focused. 

“Well, lucky for you, I’m a somewhat above-average teacher,” she jibes through gritted teeth, pouring another shot’s worth over the open wound for good measure and swallowing a whimper at the surge of agony that follows quickly on its heels. “Your first lesson? Там хорошо, где нас нет.”

Wanda blinks, eyes wide with something like horror—in retrospect, Natasha wonders if it wouldn’t have been more prudent to warn the poor girl first before disinfecting the unstitched gash in her side with nothing more than 80-proof vodka (a method of sterilization Steve and Sam and pretty much everyone else but Clint sorely disapproved of). “W-What?”

Natasha can’t help but heave an audible sigh at that, offering a bug-eyed Wanda the three-quarters-full bottle and gesturing for her to set it aside. “Там хорошо, где нас нет.” She watches idly as Wanda sets the bottle upon the nearest stainless-steel countertop with trembling hands. “Grab me that med kit, will you? Second lesson—how to stitch up an open wound.”

Wanda blinks again, turning uncertainly towards the nearest med kit (as per Natasha’s indication) sitting squarely atop the counter in a translucent white rectangular case marked with a painted fire-engine-red Swiss cross upon its side. “I—Okay.”

“So: Там хорошо, где нас нет,” Natasha repeats as Wanda returns with the kit in bloody-knuckled hands, a haunted look marring her comely features. “What does it mean? The overlap between Russian and Sokovian dialects should get you close enough.”

Wanda frowns thoughtfully, pushing out her lower lip in an _adorable_ pout—Natasha can practically _see_ the gears in her quick little brain turning as she thinks on Natasha’s words. “Good is there… where we are not?”

“Well done,” Natasha praises, genuinely meaning it (and basking in the way Wanda's cheeks flush beneath the subtle commendation). “‘There is good where we are not’… or ’The grass is greener on the other side,’ as the Americans would say.”

“I like the Russian version better.”

“Me too.”

— — 

(They kiss three years later for the very first time, on a crumbling and fire-ridden battlefield on a dying planet— _their_ planet, damaged and ailing and already half blown to hell by a purple monster with an iron will and every last Stone embedded in his brass gauntlet. 

They kiss three years later for the very first time on a crumbling and fire-ridden battlefield because they aren’t sure they’ll live past the next ten minutes, because it feels for all the world like there’s not much else to do but cling to that which you love for all you’re worth before it’s gone, because it’s the end of everything and Natasha’s vision is rapidly growing black around the edges and she doesn’t want to leave this life without knowing how it feels to kiss Wanda Maximoff like she should’ve done all those years ago, when Thanos wasn’t here and Earth wasn’t dying and they had _time_ to spare. 

They kiss three years later for the very first time on a crumbling and fire-ridden battlefield on a dying planet they once called home, and it’s every bit as sweet as Natasha dared to dream it might be; it’s perfect, or as close as Natasha thinks she’ll ever get to it, and she thinks it’s something like a miracle when Thanos falls at Tony’s feet, because she’s still standing and so is Wanda and she doesn’t quite know how to reconcile that with the bone-deep certainty she'd felt just moments earlier that this was the end of it, for all of them.

They kiss three years later over and over and over again on a crumbling and fire-ridden battlefield on a dying planet that somehow isn’t dying any longer, and there isn’t a shred of anything green in their remote vicinity, but Wanda says it anyways and Natasha says it right back, because they’re alive and they won, but most of all because she _can_ : 

“Там хорошо, где нас нет.”

“Там хорошо, где нас нет.”)

— —

**Author's Note:**

> там хорошо, где нас нет | _tom harasho, guhdye nas nyet_ | "there is good where we are not" (literal translation) [american rough equivalent: "the grass is greener on the other side"]
> 
> let me know your thoughts? 
> 
> (my [tumblr](https://psyches.co.vu/))


End file.
